Chapter 20
One Grand Step Closer to Gold
Brewer’s Reputation: 2,424.
Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.
I woke up warm and sore. The tree branch wasn’t exactly the most relaxing thing to sleep on. My bedroll was only so thin. But the sheltering attributes that Abigail has used kept the wind out, kept us warm, and muffled sounds of nature.
On the furthest branches, a flock of grackles clicked and sputtered like lit fuses. Below, far below, the sun raked the land with streaks of sunlight. As it hoisted itself from the horizon, it was still soft enough to enter my eyes without giving me pain. I sat up, leaned on an arm, and stared into the gold-orange sun for nearly a minute.
A dagger’s blade sliced into an apple. Abigail was up, sitting cross legged. In her lap was a wooden bowl to catch slices of apple. She divided 4 apples before waving me over. I went over. We watched the wilderness below steep in sunlight.
“Morning,” Abigail croaked.
“Morning,” I croaked.
Not just morning, a good morning. The apples were as crisp and as crunchy as stacked wafers. Each slice held the amount of juice that only the first bite normally had. A cider-like juice that was clear as yellow topaz.
I halved an acorn squash from last year’s harvest. The flesh was orange like a pumpkin and the seeds came out in a few easy scoops.
“Raw?” Abigail said.
“Hopefully not. We’ll see.”
It was so strange to be so high above the sun, that the shadow of the branch was cast above me on the trunk of the colossal tree. In the next few hours, the sun would be blaring down on us. I only needed one hour to use Fire and Roast on the squash to cook it.
What sounded simple soon became a tough endeavor. Using Fire and Roast for an entire hour, straight, was something I’d never done before. It used an extraordinary amount of mana and I had to keep sipping from a mana ale. The patience and concentration I needed to sit and focus on Fire and Roast was something I borrowed from my meditation required in forging ethereal ingredients. However, Fire and Roast was a difficult skill to maintain for an hour. Once, when I failed and the acorn squash fell out of the air, Abigail was quick to use her skill to help until I downed more mana ale and resumed.
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The effort was thrice what I normally put into brewing and cooking. But I felt accomplished trying to bend my skills for other uses. Tasty uses. Though the squash didn’t have the char and smoke of my wood oven stove, its aroma was cousin to that of a cave aged cheese. It was nutty too, like peanuts crushed by hand.
We ate in silence. The forest canopy was too far below for us to hear the wind that moved the leaves. Even the wind tried to come up, throwing leaves and twigs as high as it could. No breeze made it up. When the grackles dove off, having nearly no option but down, The only sound that remained was the scoop of metal spoons through steaming squash flesh.
Our breakfast ended too early. And as we had lately taken custom to do, Abigail began brewing beer for her shard quest. I meanwhile mulled over recipes for my daily attempt at a golden chapter beer. Torn between the stout and a crisp ale, I decided to brew a golden stout.
Which barley should I use? One of the few that I had yet to identify. Without Thrush, I relied on my Collector’s Journal Absorption Stone. So with the journal open to the next available page, still less than halfway through the book, I picked a grain to taste.
It was larger than barley generally was, about the size of my thumbnail. In the light of the sun that finally threw a ray of light upon us, there was a white sheen. White like selenite.
The grain tasted like dried grass, hay, and hail. Hail? I could barely place the taste that reminded me of hail, when words and illustrations began to bleed onto the page.
“Pearls of Xyx. This variety of barley grows in wetlands. It prefers the brackish waters of deep swamps. The Xyx creatures have been cultivating this grain for one millennia. Pearls of Xyx barley are known to be the creamiest on the market. The Xyx press these grains to extract an oily milk that is rumored to make up nearly eighty percent of the Xyx diet. The flavors range from frozen milk to wet farmland. An uncommon barley.”
Brewer’s Harvest rewarded me with several bushels full—most I had to store on Beyond the Cabin. What I was left to brew with I mashed and added witland hops for their fruity and sweet pine flavor.
Because the grains weren’t roasted as much as they should be for a dark stout, the color of the malt came to be something golden, like a plate of mirrored brass underwater. Or like the sun in a precious childhood memory.
I finished brewing the beer into a 500ml forged ethereal label wrapped into the shape of a waterskin. Before pouring a drop onto my Collector’s Journal, I check to see which of my skills improved.
Brewer’s Harvest increased to 1664, Alchemical Control to level 1940, Flash Ferment to level 1865, Foam Cascade to 1539, and the Erupting Streams sub skill to level 28. My overall Brewer level remained at 1999.
I poured a drop onto my Collector’s Journal.
[Gold Stout.]
[Silver rank. 07/100 Grand Honorable.]
[Brewed by Hawkin Ballow.]
[Elevation may have had something to do with the creaminess of the blend of styles. Using Pearl of Xyx barley, this beer is one of the creamiest silver rank beers in the world. The malt is a deep amber, the color of honey exhumed from ancient burials. Erupting Streams Foam moves slowly like dazed snakes. The hops turn this beer of salted hay into a pastoral star. Several instances of fruit and cream can be discovered in every other sip. A slight wild pine provides a lick of acid to beautifully balance the heavy cream.]
The Grand Honorable quality tier. The last tier before gold rank. Would being that much closer to gold rank improve my chances in brewing Golden Chapter beers? Or was I kidding myself?
“Looks good,” Abigail said.
I shook off the foam that was cascading over my knuckles. I passed Abigail the bottle.